Dialing in the accuracy of satellite weather forecasting is the goal behind basic research into raindrop size and shape being done at UAH by a UAH doctoral student who is also an atmospheric scientist in the NASA Pathways Intern Employment Program. Patrick Gatlin says his work measuring the height and width of raindrops using ground instruments provides an accuracy baseline that is then scaled up to ground radar and then to satellite measurements. He is co-author of a paper on the topic (Tokay, Ali, Walter A. Petersen, Patrick Gatlin, Matthew Wingo, 2013: Comparison of Raindrop Size Distribution Measurements by Collocated Disdrometers. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 30, 1672–1690; http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-12-00163.1). "That's really the whole purpose of measuring raindrops, is for remote sensing purposes," Gatlin says. Scaling up accuracy from a small sensor on the ground to large sections of the Earth being observed from space requires very accurately calibrated instruments. "Our ability to correctly depict rainfall using a sensor in space is closely tied to knowing how precipitation varies, right down to the individual raindrop and snowflake size."